


Other People

by indigostohelit



Series: The Road [1]
Category: Homestuck
Genre: Alternate Universe - High School, Bullying, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-02-19
Updated: 2012-02-19
Packaged: 2017-10-31 10:23:59
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,304
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/342960
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/indigostohelit/pseuds/indigostohelit
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>John picks canned peas off his pants, the days begin to blur, and that's not the worst part.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Other People

**1.** The worst part is when John gets up.

That’s a lie.

The worst part is when he trips. A stray foot—only Dave knows it’s not stray, and John knows it’s not stray, and every fucking person in the cafeteria knows it’s no accident that John goes flying, his lunch tray tumbling to the ground, and what Dave remembers later, of all the things, is the Jell-O. It doesn’t so much splatter as smash, slide, soak, candy red on John’s shirt and his face and the smooth yellow linoleum tiles.

The worst part is when somebody starts laughing.

The worst part is when the whole table is laughing, all the fuckers sitting there, the stocky boy in the letterman jacket and the tall, good-looking one with hair that looks like Justin Bieber’s and the bony girl with curly blonde hair. It’s laughter that just skirts the edge of meanness, flirts with it, says, _We’re not laughing at you, we’re laughing with you, Jesus Christ, idiot, can’t you take a joke?_

The worst part is when someone else starts giggling, and then another. And another.

The worst part is when, the cafeteria ringing with laughter, John stunned on the cafeteria tiles, Dave hesitates for a whole minute, afraid to run to him.

John gets up. He brushes what Jell-O he can off his shirt and picks some canned peas from his pants, bends down to pick up his lunch tray, says, “Haha, good one, guys!” He’s smiling.

**2.** Something happens a month later. It’s the kind of thing the principal calls an _incident_. Someone draws a picture in one of the boys’ bathrooms. It’s a stick figure, being hanged. Beneath the scaffold are flames, reaching up with astounding detail, licking at the stick figure’s feet. There’s a sentence beneath it.

The principal says, at the Educational Assembly they have a week later, “The graffiti contained an explicit threat against those of a homosexual inclination.” He folds his hands, face serious. “This high school expects its students to maintain a mature level of discourse. Death threats, such as they are, go against our policy of an appropriate school environment.”

In U.S. History the next period, they discuss the assembly. The bony blonde girl, who always has the most intellectual comments, says, “I think what we need to understand is that not all comments are serious. Sure, some graffiti may have been put on the wall of a bathroom—which, by the way, is vandalism, and hello, is an actual _definable crime_ , so maybe that’s what we should be talking about instead—but come on. People make jokes. That’s what they do. Maybe they thought it was cool. Maybe it was a dare. What I’m saying is, we shouldn’t jump to put the school in, in _lockdown_ because of some random comment.”

The stocky boy, who will be valedictorian when they graduate, says, “Sarah, you’re making some really good points, but I gotta disagree with you on the definable crime part. Hate crime is definable, and is defined—”

“Okay,” says the bony blonde girl, “now we’re, like, calling a drawing a hate crime? That’s pretty extreme. Look, I don’t know about you guys,” she addresses the class, “but I like to think I have a little more faith in this school than that. Come on, this is the twenty-first century. Nobody is going to, like, go out at night with a burning cross. Let’s not be judgmental.”

“Anyway,” says the boy with hair like Justin Bieber, “whoever drew it was just expressing an opinion, right? I mean, if you don’t let people express their opinions, you’re just violating a fundamental right. Like. Come on, where is this, China?”

The class sniggers. No one wants to be China. Dave doesn’t say anything. John doesn’t say anything. The teacher says, “Okay, guys, this is getting a little off-topic. Let’s return to Bacon’s Rebellion, hmm?”

John never got braces. Dave never takes his sunglasses off. John likes Con Air. Dave likes to rap. John doesn’t celebrate Christmas. Dave doesn’t own a car. John is in Film Club but not friends with its president. Dave does really well in Photography but is failing gym. Neither of them goes to football games. Neither of them goes to basketball games. Neither of them goes to dances.

There are two buses in town. One is yellow and cheery, and takes all the elementary school kids to their grey playground at eight-thirty precisely every morning. The other is a Greyhound, and it only passes through once every three days, pausing at their bus stop as lightly as a butterfly pauses on a leaf before speeding on again, leaving a trail of dust in its wake.

The road stretches on forever in both directions. On the outskirts of town there’s nothing but brown grass and hills, as far as the eye can see.

Dave signs up for cross-country. John says he has the body for it. He does have the body for it, inherited it from his brother, and he takes off far, far ahead of the pack, runs alone through the woods and around the hills, wins by a mile, sits by himself on the bus home, quits the next day.

**3.** The days begin to blur. One falls into the next: Monday feels like Tuesday, Thursday like Monday, Wednesday like Friday, Monday like Friday, Tuesday like Friday, Thursday like Friday. Dave sets his alarm, wakes up, eats breakfast, comes home, eats dinner, sets his alarm. When he’s at home he curls up in his bed, texts John, reads comic books, texts John, plugs his headphones into his ears and doesn’t take them out until his mother calls for dinner. When he’s at school he sketches out rap lyrics in the margins of tests he doesn’t bother to take, texts John under the table, plays Solitaire on his phone, waits for John to respond.

The world is so much softer than it used to be. He doesn’t quite notice the color of the sky any more, the way the sun bleeds into the clouds, the sharp edge of a blade of grass. Everything is at a distance. Everything is the same. Everything is okay as long as he doesn’t have to care about it. He daydreams about the Greyhound bus.

The bony blonde girl says in U.S. History, “If you don’t look at things objectively, you won’t be able to have a good discussion. Don’t try and paint me as the bad guy. I’m just trying to facilitate an objective point of view.”

“All I’m saying is,” says the stocky boy, “all I’m saying is, you have to let other people have their point of view, and if someone is actually getting offended by these kinds of comments—which, hello, I don’t see anyone speaking up—maybe they just don’t belong in a mature discussion community.”

“That’s so fucking gay, bro,” says the boy with the hair like Justin Bieber, and the teacher looks up, looks back down, goes back to her paperwork.

John smiles when he gets up. That’s the worst part.

**4.** The sun is setting outside the window.

John says, “Look, Dave,” nudges Dave in the shoulder, points. The sky is painted in purples and indigoes and greys like John’s never seen it before.

“John?” says Dave.

John turns over on his side so he’s facing Dave. The bedsprings squeak, but they do that if you even breathe, so that’s all right. “Yeah? What’s wrong?”

“Why the fuck do you keep smiling?” says Dave.

“Well,” says John, looking up at Dave, keeping his voice bright, “if we aren’t happy, what have we got, right?”

Dave turns from the window, props himself up on one elbow, says, “So you’re happy?”

**5.** They say it gets better.

That’s what they say.


End file.
